Constraining Centennial-Scale Ecosystem-Climate Interactions with a Pre-colonial Forest Reconstruction across the Upper Midwest and Northeastern United States

Jaclyn Hatala Matthes, Dartmouth College, Dept. Geography and Grad Program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Hanover, NH, United States, Michael Dietze, Boston University, Department of Earth and Environment, Boston, MA, United States, Andrew M Fox, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States, Simon J Goring, University of Wisconsin, Department of Geography, Center for Climatic Research, and Data Science Institute, Madison, United States, Jason S McLachlan, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, United States, David JP Moore, University of Arizona, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Tucson, AZ, United States, Benjamin Poulter, Spark Climate Solutions, Greenbelt, United States, Tristan L Quaife, University of Reading, Department of Meteorology, Reading, RG6, United Kingdom, Kevin M Schaefer, National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A, Boulder, United States, Joerg Steinkamp, Senckenberg, Frankfurt, Germany, John W Williams, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Geography & Center for Climatic Research, Madison, United States and PalEON Settlement Vegetation Team
Abstract:
Interactions between ecological systems and the atmosphere are the result of dynamic processes with system memories that persist from seconds to centuries. Adequately capturing long-term biosphere-atmosphere exchange within earth system models (ESMs) requires an accurate representation of changes in plant functional types (PFTs) through time and space, particularly at timescales associated with ecological succession. However, most model parameterization and development has occurred using datasets than span less than a decade. We tested the ability of ESMs to capture the ecological dynamics observed in paleoecological and historical data spanning the last millennium. Focusing on an area from the Upper Midwest to New England, we examined differences in the magnitude and spatial pattern of PFT distributions and ecotones between historic datasets and the CMIP5 inter-comparison project’s large-scale ESMs. We then conducted a 1000-year model inter-comparison using six state-of-the-art biosphere models at sites that bridged regional temperature and precipitation gradients. The distribution of ecosystem characteristics in modeled climate space reveals widely disparate relationships between modeled climate and vegetation that led to large differences in long-term biosphere-atmosphere fluxes for this region. Model simulations revealed that both the interaction between climate and vegetation and the representation of ecosystem dynamics within models were important controls on biosphere-atmosphere exchange.
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